ACTUACIONES DETALLADAS DEL PROGRAMA DE PREVENCIÓN

Karen Mohr (612) began mentoring Stephen Nicholls, an NPP post-doctoral student who received his PhD in atmospheric science from Rutgers University under adviser Steve Decker in December, 2012. His dissertation topic was WRF modeling of coastally transitioning Nor’easters. Stephen will be working with Karen on the hydrometeorology of the tropical Andes using a combination of TRMM data analysis and WRF modeling.

P.K. Bhartia (610) and Code 614 Scientists hosted four students from South Korea visited Goddard under

an MOU signed between NASA and Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea. Under this MOU a ground- based campaign called Dragon was conducted last year in South Korea using AERONET instruments from Brent Holben and two Pandora instruments from Jay Herman. The student visit was to retrieve aerosol and ozone data from OMI over South Korea and to compare with Dragon measurements. Results of this study will be useful to develop algorithms for the GEMS instrument to be flown on a Korean geostationary satellite in 2018.

Gerry McIntire (SGT/612) presented information on NASA programs to the first grade class at W. B. Simpson Elementary school in Camden, DE, on May 16. The class has been talking about astronauts and their role in the space program. Gerry, with the help of the GSFC Public Affairs Office, engaged the children on this topic.

Dr. David Whiteman (612) was an external research advisor and member of a PhD committee for

Monique Walker. She successfully defended her PhD dissertation on June 17 at the Howard University Graduate School in Washington, DC. Her work was entitled “Investigation of a Lamp Mapping Technique for Calibration and Diagnostics of Raman Lidar Systems”. Dr. Walker has been awarded a NASA

Postdoctoral Program fellowship for continued work in this area under the mentorship of Dr. Whiteman. Her fellowship began in July 2013.

Dr. Yaping Zhou (USRA/613) was shadowed by a high school science teacher from Baltimore County,

MD, from July 5 through July 9. During the one week program, Dr. Zhou helped the teacher learn about the day-to-day work of a research scientist and familiarized her with many existing online NASA educational tools that can be used in the classroom. Dr. Shou also helped her identify and develop a missing piece in the current Maryland high school Earth science curriculum—global warming and the cryosphere— after attending a seminar by Warren Wiscombe (613).

John R. Moisan (610.W) mentored four interns (three university and one high school level) during

the summer at Wallops Flight Facility. Two of the interns, David Coulter (a physics and math major at Portland Community College) and Erik Wisuri (a physics and computer science major at Northern

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Michigan University) are working on the “Genetic Programming for Ocean Microbial Ecology and Biodiversity” project, which is jointly funded by NASA and The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to develop a computational objective method to evolve system of coupled equations for simulating ecosys- tems. Another student, Shelley Hanes (a biomedical engineering major at the University of Tennessee) is working on developing a capability to expand an inverse hyperspectral model so that it can retrieve plant fluorescence signatures from the remote-sensing spectra. A fourth student, Daniel Beck (a high school student with plans to major in engineering) is developing a database of phytoplankton pigment to chloro- phyll ratios in order to support a numerical application that uses phytoplankton pigment observations to estimate phytoplankton functional or species diversity.

Joe Munchak (612/ESSIC) presented “Earth from Space: The Science and Engineering of NASA’s Earth Observing Satellites” at the Thomas Jefferson Symposium to Advance Research (TJSTAR), Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, Alexandria, VA, on May 29. TJSTAR is an annual event where students share research projects, explore potential research careers, and take part in interac- tive learning opportunities.

Anne Thompson (614), Rennie Selkirk (USRA) and Prof Gary Morris (Valparaiso University) led

a group of Penn State and Valparaiso University students in ozonesonde training at the Penn State Meteorology Department from July 15 to 17 in University Park, PA. During the SEAC4RS campaign, ozonesondes will collect data from the surface to over 30 km for satellite and aircraft instrumentation verification as well as input to DC-8 flight planning and models. The purpose of the workshop was to pre- pare participants for launching sondes in the Southern American Consortium for Intensive Ozonesonde Network Study (SEACIONS) component of SEAC4RS for which Thompson is principle investigator. The

SEACIONS network consists of universities (e.g., Florida State, Saint Louis, and University of Alabama- Huntsville, New Mexico Tech) as well as NOAA/GMD in Boulder. The GSFC group will also launch water vapor sondes to compare to ER-2 instruments during landings at Ellington Field, TX. SEACIONS

launches will operate daily, mostly during the A-Train overpass.

Tiffany A. Moisan (610.W) gave a seminar for the Natural Sciences Department at Salisbury University

entitled “Using NASA Satellites to Understand the Role of Phytoplankton in the Carbon Cycle”, in September 2013.

Ginger Butcher (Sigma), Aura Education and Public Outreach lead, concluded a video production

student workshop conducted remotely via Google+ Hangout sessions throughout the month of July. Along with the Aqua EPO lead Steve Graham (GST), they brought together producers and communi- cations experts from Code 130 with GSFC Earth scientists Bryan Duncan (614), Claire Parkinson

(610), and Charles Ichoku (613) to help students produce three videos that complemented upcom-

ing NASA media campaigns. The first video finalized was by Michelle Ko, a rising high school senior from Pasadena, CA. She created a fantastic video about fires and their connection to climate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4C3-RKKgzU

Charles Ichoku (613) mentored Trisha Michael from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology.

She presented a poster entitled, Fire Emissions Input into the NASA Unified Weather Research and Forecasting (NU-WRF) Model during a summer Intern Poster Sessions in the Building 28 Atrium.

Valentina Aquila (Code 614) gave an invited talk at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences

of Stony Brook University. The title of the presentation was “Response of Ozone and Nitrogen Dioxide to the Eruption of Mt. Pinatubo.” The video of the seminar is publically available at

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Atmospheric Research 2013 Technical Highlights 63 Deborah Stein Zweers (614) participated in the Mount Vernon Woods Elementary School “Career Day”

in Alexandria, VA, and gave presentations to several 5th _{and 6}th _{grade classes about her career as an air}

quality scientist at GSFC. Outreach materials were given out to teachers and each student regarding cur- rent NASA satellite missions.